


from my lungs to yours (from your mouth to mine)

by doctorkaitlyn



Category: Buzzfeed: Worth It (Web Series)
Genre: First Kiss, Fluff, Friends to Lovers, Getting Together, Literal Sleeping Together, M/M, Making Out, Snowball Fight, post-episode
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-25
Updated: 2018-04-25
Packaged: 2019-04-27 13:32:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,138
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14426469
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/doctorkaitlyn/pseuds/doctorkaitlyn
Summary: Steven's imagined their first kiss more times than he can remember, flicked through seemingly endless possibilities on the nights where he was too tired to keep thoughts of Andrew out of his mind, but not once had he imagined that it would be like this: in the middle of the night, thousands of miles from home, with snow melting in his hair and clumping on Andrew’s eyelashes and soaking through his clothes.It’s perfect.





	from my lungs to yours (from your mouth to mine)

**Author's Note:**

> and I'm back at it again with the fluff. takes place after the Superbowl episode. typos and miscellaneous fuck-ups are all mine!
> 
> title from [Winter Passing](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4-n6j5RnPRo) by The Academy Is.

Although they wrapped filming nearly four hours ago, Steven can’t sleep.

On his right, the alarm clock resting on the small nightstand reads two o’clock in the morning, the bright red numbers floating disembodied in the darkness. He drew the curtains before he dropped into bed, so aside from the alarm clock and a sliver of yellow glow coming in underneath the door, nothing else splits the dark, no passing vehicles or twinkling from the Christmas lights strung through the trees dotting the front yard of the Airbnb they’ve rented for the night.

It’s not a problem of comfort; the mattress has a memory foam topper as soft as a marshmallow, and he sank into it the instant he stretched out. The sheets and pillowcases smell vaguely floral from whatever detergent they were last washed in, and it’s absolutely lovely, makes him think of home. 

The problem is that the room is too quiet.

His apartment back in Los Angeles is close enough to a major thoroughfare that there’s usually a steady thrum of ambient traffic noise to lull him to sleep. If the traffic _does_ get too quiet, there’s always the air conditioner churning away or the sound of Evan (who keeps some truly bizarre hours, even by Steven’s fairly relaxed standards) puttering away in the kitchen or living room.

But aside from the quiet thrum of the heat gliding out of the vents, there’s nothing like that here. There was barely any traffic during peak hours, and there’s absolutely none now. The room Adam is staying in shares a wall with Steven’s, but he hasn’t heard any sound through it for ages. Every time he moves into a new position, the muted sounds of his body shifting against the mattress seem impossibly loud, like a plastic wrapper crinkling in an otherwise silent office.

He rolls from his back to his side for what must be the twelfth time in the last hour, closes his eyes and forces himself to remain still. Maybe, if he fakes it long enough, he’ll simply drift off.

He manages to make it through a mere five minutes of stillness before his eyes spring open again. He groans, kicks the blanket aside, slides out of bed and pads toward the door. There’s a television in the living room that’s hooked up to Netflix; maybe, if he watches a few episodes of something mindless, he’ll be able to doze off.

Even though they packed up the leftovers from the game day feast earlier, he can still smell food when he steps into the hallway, and his stomach automatically rumbles. There’s a soft glow of lamplight coming from the living room, and when Steven walks into the room, he’s a little surprised to see that Andrew is still awake, hasn’t even changed out of his jeans into something more comfortable. He’s stretched out on the black leather couch, a small mound of pillows shoved between his back and the armrest, a book cradled in his fingers and a glass of wine resting on the floor within easy reach. 

“Couldn’t sleep either?” Steven asks, yawning widely as he shuffles over to the fridge. He’s definitely not hungry, but a glass of wine would be nice.

“It’s too quiet,” Andrew answers, closing his book with a muted thud and dropping it to the floor.

“ _Way_ too quiet,” Steven agrees, grabbing a glass from the cabinet over the sink and filling it up halfway. The bottle is nearly empty, so he brings it with him when he walks over to the couch. “Want a refill?”

“If you’d care to do the honors.” Andrew holds his glass up, and Steven fills it with the last of the wine before he settles down at the other end of the couch. When he stretches out, his heels end up resting on Andrew’s shins, but Andrew doesn’t pull away. Instead, he reaches behind his back and extracts a pillow from the small mountain propping him up.

“Here.” He tosses it into Steven’s lap, and he tucks it between his back and the armrest. Absently, he notices that the pillow has been warmed through by Andrew’s body heat, and his cheeks flush.

Having a _thing_ for Andrew is usually easy enough to deal with. Sure, it’s a lot to handle when they’re pressed together in yet another small booth or walking close enough that their hands keep brushing, but at the end of the day, he has a job to do, and focusing on that makes it easy to skim over the fact that Andrew is mere inches away from him, smiling and laughing and being unfairly gorgeous.

But it’s the moments like this, when the cameras are off and it’s just the two of them, that it becomes a thing almost impossible to ignore.

“It’s beautiful here,” Andrew says, taking a sip and nodding towards the window. For a moment, Steven is distracted by the red tinge slicking Andrew’s lips, and it’s only after Andrew licks it away that he’s able to break his gaze and tilt his head back to look outside. Aside from the blue Christmas lights dotting the tree in the front yard, there’s nothing but darkness as far as the eye can see. 

“Yeah,” he agrees, taking his own sip. The wine is sweet and smooth and warms him down to the pit of his stomach, and he immediately takes another sip. “Wish it wasn’t so cold though.” Andrew laughs and shakes his head, the curve of his mouth hinting at a smile to come in the near future.

Steven remembers a time when he considered each smile that he managed to wring out of Andrew to be a personal victory, something truly worth celebrating, but it seems like Andrew’s gotten freer with them lately, doesn’t keep them tucked as close to his chest. 

It’s both a blessing and a curse, because with each additional smile he sees, Steven falls a little more in love with him. 

“What were we thinking, getting ice cream today?’ Andrew asks, shuddering a little.

“I was thinking that most of my taste buds were burnt off at Revival, and I needed to bring them back to life if I wanted to finish the episode.”

“So you mean your taste buds needed…reviving?”

Steven _knows_ that he basically walked into that, but he still groans and stretches out to lightly kick Andrew in the knee, which just makes Andrew’s smug smirk grow wider.

“Shut up. I’m too tired to deal with your puns.”

“You know you love them,” Andrew replies, sinking further back into the pillows. His socked feet press into Steven’s calves, a few inches below the bend of his knee, and even though the logical part of Steven’s brain says that he should move away, he presses into the contact instead.

“I know no such thing,” he lies, tilting his head back against the armrest and staring up at the smooth, beige ceiling, because it’s easier to keep the truth hidden if he isn’t looking at Andrew’s face. Andrew just laughs again, a quiet huff of a sound that Steven truly wants to hear every day for the rest of his life.

“Whatever you say.” 

For a long series of moments, silence stretches out between them. Unlike the silence that had driven him out to the living room in the first place, it isn’t unbearable. Steven doesn’t feel the need to break the quiet by talking, doesn’t feel pressured to do anything more than continue to lie on the couch and sip his wine, which has started to creep into his head and slow his thoughts down a little, in addition to warming his stomach.

Eventually, Andrew speaks again, his voice hushed.

“It’s snowing.”

Steven glances back at the window. Sure enough, huge snowflakes are falling from the obsidian sky, drifting lazily past the glass like miniaturized paper doilies.

As much as Steven loves Los Angeles, loves the tranquil blues of the sea and the sky, loves the explosive colors of the sunset and the cool wind that comes off the ocean, he doesn’t think he’s ever seen anything as beautiful as this.

Even though it’s undoubtedly beyond freezing outside, it seems a shame to waste such an opportunity.

“Do you want to go for a walk?” he asks, turning back to face Andrew. “Just around the block, I mean.” He half-expects Andrew to laugh at him again, say something about how there’s no way in hell he’s venturing outside at this time of night, but instead, he nods and polishes off the last inch of wine clinging to the bottom of his glass.

“Sure. Just give me a few minutes to get dressed.”

“Yeah, okay.” There’s two mouthfuls of wine left in his own glass, and he swallows them both in quick succession before he gets to his feet. The room sways, just a little. “I’ll meet you out here.”

He heads back to his room, swaps out his sweatpants for jeans and throws on both a long-sleeved shirt and a hoodie before he goes to the foyer to grab his coat and scarf. Andrew is already there, coat zipped up as high as it will go, tugging on a pair of black gloves.

“I reserve the right to bail on you if it’s too cold,” he says, jamming his BuzzFeed hat on top of his head.

“I reserve the right to make you stay with me until I’m ready to come back,” Steven shoots back with a grin as he pulls on his shoes.

“I will literally pick you up and carry you back if you try that.” 

Steven resolutely tries not to think too hard about that particular mental image, but he fails. He’s thought about it before, about how easily Andrew could pick him up and press him back against a wall, and it never fails to lead him down a line of thought that’s inappropriate to have when his best friend is standing beside him. 

He responds, trying to sound as casual as he can, “Does this mean you’ll give me a piggy back if my legs get tired?” 

Andrew shrugs, unlocks the door and holds it open for Steven.

“We’ll see.”

The first breath of night air scorches Steven’s throat and burns his lungs, and he takes another deep breath as he pulls his scarf up to the top of his neck. It smells cleaner, sharper somehow, and breathing it in almost feels _purifying_. 

Still, it’s cold enough that he thinks a quick walk around the block will be more than enough.

“Jesus Christ,” Andrew says, jamming his hands down into the pockets of his coat. “Why is it so damn cold?”

“Wanna go get some ice cream?” Steven asks, stepping onto the sidewalk. It’s crusted in a thin layer of fresh snow glistening as bright as diamonds, and it almost feels wrong to leave footprints in it. Andrew groans and bumps his shoulder into Steven’s.

“My tongue is already frozen, thank you very much.” 

“We could make hot chocolate when we get back, if you want.” Andrew makes a soft sound of acknowledgment, and his shoulder brushes against Steven’s again, gentler this time.

“Yeah. That could be nice.”

The same comfortable silence that enveloped them on the couch drapes over them again. Every house on the street is dark and quiet, and while Steven can hear the sound of traffic drifting on the slight breeze, not a single car turns onto the street, and they have the sidewalk entirely to themselves. The snow is still falling thickly, clumping together on his shoulders and head. Overhead, the moon is half-full, glowing like a chipped pearl at the bottom of the sea, and Steven wishes that they’d brought a camera with them, just to capture the sheer beauty of the night, a beauty he’s pretty sure he’ll never see again.

Abruptly, something soft and cold thumps into the side of his head and explodes into a thousand glittering specks. 

Steven spins around just in time for another snowball to explode against his chest. Andrew is grinning at him, gloved hands covered in loose snowflakes, and when he stoops over to start forming another snowball, Steven kicks a clump of powdery snow at him. Most of it hits Andrew square in the face, and he splutters as he takes a few steps backwards.

“I thought you said it was ‘so cold’,” Steven says, putting on a bit of a whine for the last words as he ducks behind a tree and starts forming a snowball of his own.

“I’m just trying to warm up,” Andrew answers, like it’s the most obvious thing in the world. A moment later, another snowball flies past Steven’s shoulder and shatters harmlessly on the ground, and Steven leans around the tree to retaliate.

Andrew is no longer standing on the sidewalk.

Before he can spin back around, Andrew smashes a clump of snow directly on top of his head, and Steven gasps and tries to shake the snow out of his hair before it can trickle down the back of his neck and underneath his collar.

“That’s it,” he says, turning around and blindly grabbing the first part of Andrew he can reach, which turns out to be the front of his coat. “I’m done going easy on you.”

“Wow, I’m _so_ scared,” Andrew laughs as he hooks his fingers into Steven’s lapels and tugs. Steven tries to gain the upper hand, but his feet slip and slide on the snow, and he stumbles into Andrew’s broad chest. It knocks Andrew off-balance, and he goes crashing to the ground, pulling Steven with him. Steven lands on top of him with an _oomph_ as one of Andrew’s elbows glances off his ribs.

“You _should_ be,” he replies. By the time he finishes the sentence, the actual reality of the position they’re in has hit him. They’d been like this earlier in the night, when they’d been fooling around while filming the outro for the episode, but they hadn’t stayed on the ground for too long, had been too worried about the snow damaging their microphones and battery packs.

But there’s no equipment now. There’s just the two of them, with only the dark expanse of the sky and the moon watching them.

Steven swallows, releases Andrew’s jacket and drops his hands down beside Andrew’s shoulders so that he can hold himself up. He should be pushing himself to his feet, should be scrambling to get his body out from between Andrew’s splayed legs, should _not_ be transfixed by the fact that they’re so close that, when they breathe out, the plumes of their exhales mix together until it’s impossible to tell them apart.

It’s unreasonably cold, and there’s snow melting in Steven’s hair and soaking through his jeans, but his whole body feels aflame.

Andrew slowly lets out a breath and releases Steven’s lapels and, for a split second, Steven thinks that’s the sign that the moment is over. But before he can move, Andrew drops one of his hands to Steven’s waist and curls his fingers into the thick fabric of Steven’s coat. He brings his other hand to his mouth, sinks his teeth into the index finger of his glove and tugs it off. It’s quite possibly the most attractive thing Steven has ever seen him do, and he has to bite back a soft groan as Andrew carefully fits his bare palm to the curve of Steven’s cheek.

“Steven,” he murmurs, eyes lowered to Steven’s mouth, thumb carefully skating back and forth along Steven’s cheekbone. Even though there’s no upward inflection at the end of the word, Steven still hears it as the question he knows it to be.

“Andrew,” he replies quietly, hoping that Andrew hears it as the absolute permission it is.

He does.

The kiss is hesitant at first; almost as soon as their mouths brush together, they both pause. Steven doesn’t want to be greedy and take too much too soon, doesn’t want to scare Andrew away before they even really have a chance at figuring out what this is. After a few moments, he tilts his head a little and deepens the kiss, feeling all the while like every nerve in his brain is screaming incoherently at him. Andrew sighs into his mouth and slides his hand up into Steven’s hair. When Steven’s arms start to shake from the effort of holding himself up, he drops down to his elbows, which presses them together in more spots than he can count.

He’s imagined their first kiss more times than he can remember, flicked through seemingly endless possibilities on the nights where he was too tired to keep thoughts of Andrew out of his mind, but not once had he imagined that it would be like this: in the middle of the night, thousands of miles from home, with snow melting in his hair and clumping on Andrew’s eyelashes and soaking through his clothes.

It’s perfect. 

Unfortunately, despite the warmth of Andrew’s mouth, the freezing cold has wreaked havoc on Steven’s lung capacity, and he has to pull away far too prematurely to suck in an icy breath. He drops his forehead against Andrew’s and keeps his eyes closed, is unable to get rid of the childish thought that, if he opens his eyes, this might turn out to be some kind of fever dream.

“So, that’s a thing that just happened,” he says, shivering when a trail of melted snow trickles down the back of his neck.

“Yeah.” Andrew’s voice is even deeper than usual, and Steven shivers again. “Do you want it to happen again?” Steven nods with absolutely no hesitation.

“Many, many times.” It comes out a little more eagerly than he anticipated, and his cheeks go hot with embarrassment.

“In that case, we can do it as many times as you want,” Andrew answers, and it sounds like the most solemn of vows coming from his mouth. “As long as we go back inside. My back is _soaked_.” Steven laughs and finally opens his eyes as he pushes himself up with his hands. Before he moves too far away, Andrew slides his hand out of Steven’s hair and pauses, just for a moment, with it cradling his jaw.

It’s so unexpected and so tender, like Andrew is holding something truly priceless, that Steven’s mind momentarily goes utterly blank.

“You’re the one who started this,” he eventually responds as Andrew’s fingers drop away so he can pull his glove back on.

“And now I’m ending it. Stalemate. We both win. We can celebrate inside, in the living room.”

“Fine.” Steven gets up, extends his hand and pulls Andrew to his feet. Once he’s up, he doesn’t release Steven’s hand, and although their fingers don’t fit quite right together, bulky gloves getting in the way, the thought of letting go is incomprehensible to Steven.

They head back towards the house, surrounded by silence that makes Steven’s whole body thrum with anticipation, even as the heaviness of his eyes becomes more and more prominent. It has to be past three o’clock in the morning, and the plan was for them to get up early and do some sightseeing before they caught their flight out.

He suspects that isn’t going to happen now.

Once they’re back, he changes into dry clothes, runs a towel over his wet hair, and heads into the living room with the thought of turning the kettle on for hot chocolate or tea.

That thought vanishes like a puff of smoke as soon as he sees Andrew.

He’s stretched out on the couch again with his arms tucked behind his head, hair a mess of static and fly-aways, layers shucked off in favor of worn flannel pajama pants and a plain black t-shirt. It’s far from the first time Steven has seen him like this, relaxed and at ease and _soft_ , but it’s the first time he’s seen it with the knowledge that, if he wants to, he can actually _touch_ Andrew.

“Everything okay?” Andrew asks, glancing over. The soft glow from the lamp is illuminating the faint burn scar on the inside of his right arm, and Steven is struck with the urge to trace his fingers, maybe even his mouth, over it.

“Everything’s great,” he answers truthfully, yawning as he pauses in front of the couch. Despite Andrew’s words from earlier, he doesn’t want to be presumptuous, doesn’t want to simply drop down into Andrew’s lap without express permission. “Can I...”

With a sigh so soft it nearly disappears into the air before it reaches Steven’s ears, Andrew nods and holds his hand out.

“Please.” 

Steven takes Andrew’s hand and lets Andrew pull him down, takes it slow so that he doesn’t end up driving one of his elbows or knees into an inconvenient spot. Eventually, they end up reprising their positions from out in the snow, with the only difference being the significantly fewer amount of layers between them. Andrew is solid and warm underneath him, and now that he’s finally discovered what it feels like to have Andrew pressed against him, holding him close, Steven doesn’t know how he lived without it.

They kiss slowly, like sap trickling from a tree, but most of their earlier tentativeness has been vanquished in favor of pure exploration. There’s so many things Steven wants to know about Andrew. He wants to know if Andrew likes having his bottom lip tugged between Steven’s teeth, if he likes to be bitten at all, where his hands wander when his mouth is busy.

He knows that there’s no possible way he can learn everything he wants to know in only one night, but he can damn well try.

He _does_ discover a few facts that he files away for future reference. He discovers that Andrew seems to have a thing for his hair, based on how his fingers slide back into it almost as soon as they start kissing. He discovers that Andrew likes having the line of his jaw kissed, if the way he groans and tilts his head back against the armrest is anything to go off, and he discovers that he _definitely_ has a thing for the way Andrew moans his name.

Before he can discover much else, he realizes that the weight that’s been descending over his eyes for the last hour or so has finally dropped. When he pulls away to take a breath, opening them seems like an insurmountable task, as does actually getting to his feet and stumbling to the bedroom.

He wonders if Andrew’s threat to carry him back inside could be transmuted into an offer to carry him to bed.

Before he can seriously consider asking, Andrew laughs a little, and the sound is so full of _fondness_ that, if he wasn’t so tired, Steven would think about pinching himself, just to make sure this is real.

“You falling asleep on me?” he asks, sliding his palm down the back of Steven’s head to the nape of his neck.

“Yeah,” Steven mumbles. There’s no point in lying, and he doesn’t have the energy to try. Somehow, his head has dropped to Andrew’s shoulder, and he tries (and fails) to convince himself to lift it up. “I’ll move. Just... gimme a minute.”

“I have a better idea.” Andrew’s other arm, which has been wrapped around Steven’s waist, slides away. Steven hears a soft click, and even from behind his closed eyelids, he can see that the room has gotten darker, that Andrew has turned off the lamp on the end table next to the couch. His hand briefly skims along Steven’s waist as he reaches for something on the back of the couch, and moments later, the soft fleece of a throw blanket drapes itself over Steven’s legs.

“You sure?” he asks, even as he turns his head to the side so that it’s more comfortably resting against Andrew’s chest. “I can move.”

“Don’t think you can, actually,” Andrew responds. “And I don’t feel like carrying you right now.” For a few moments, he’s quiet as he rearranges the blanket to better cover them both. When he next speaks, it’s softly, with his mouth pressed against the crown of Steven’s head, nose buried in his hair. “Stay. Please.”

Even if he was fully awake, Steven doesn’t think he would be able to say no to that.

“Okay.” Andrew’s heartbeat is thrumming steadily in his ear, lulling him better than any other sound he’s ever heard, and Steven knows that, even if the memory foam mattress in the bedroom _is_ technically more comfortable to lie on than Andrew’s body, he’s not going to have any trouble falling asleep here. “I’ll stay.”

(He’s asleep before Andrew answers.)

**Author's Note:**

> as always, I can be found on [tumblr.](http://banshee-cheekbones.tumblr.com/) :)


End file.
